The Learning to
Read programme is based on the premise “Every child in school should be
learning everyday”, or else, the child would tend to fall back behind other
children. This would put him/her behind the rest of the class, which would lead
to his/her interest being reduced forcing him/her to dropout after some time.
So, if a child is learning in a school every day in a participatory mode, then
s/he would certainly be interested to learn more. The Learning to Read (L2R)
Project is based on the usual practice of learning to read a simple paragraph
in his own language by learning alphabets and matras in case of language and
recognition of numbers with place values and simple addition and subtraction in
mathematics. These are the rudimentary concepts the key for any child to go
ahead. If the I & II in the pilot stage. Child is not able to master these
basic skills, s/he will not be able to
read any textbook of mathematics or language or the environmental science.
This will create a barrier for him in higher classes. Alternatively, if a child
of Class 1 is able to master these skills s/he is bound to get lot more
interest and his/her achievement levels are bound to go up is higher classes.
That’s why L2R targeted classes guarantees that 70 to 80 percent of the
children would be able to read, write and do arithmetic in a space of 90 days
at that level. Therefore, it was thought to give it a try on a pilot basis. The
programme included one hour of language reading class and one hour of
arithmetic class every day in class I & II.. The evaluation of the competency
acquired by the children both a base level & terminal level was done by
external resource persons. To make up the shortage of teachers, an attempt was
made to engage additional teachers from the local community (called community
volunteers) . Their engagement is purely based on
actual enrolment not on the reported/recorded enrolment. The involvement of
teachers in schemes like Mid-Day Meal and other available and nearly 30 percent
of them never attended to school although they are just on the rolls. It was
also found that though some of the children are enrolled in the Government
schools they are reading in the nearby private schools. However to overcome
these problems specific plans to be formulated to quick follow up action to be
taken up.
Challenges
There are certain other aspects, which need to be taken care of before
such a project is up scaled. As teachers in workshop mode developed the
material, there should be sufficient time gap between the programme, workshop
and actual implementation of the programme so that materials are prepared,
edited, printed and distributed to each of the school prior to the commencement
of the actual programme.
It is necessary to train the teachers along with materials prior to the
programme so as to ensure that these materials are used properly when the
programme starts.
Ashok kumar Paikaray
Pratham Orissa
